The mayor of Gdansk is supporting a campaign to name a new viaduct in honour of British fantasy writer J.R.R Tolkien.

The design has already been dubbed “The Eye of Sauron” by members of the public, alluding to the arch villain in The Lord of the Rings saga.

Now the Tolkien tag appears to have official backing. “The idea strikes me as being very interesting,” wrote mayor Pawel Adamowicz on his blog yesterday.

“Tolkien is a figure who rather does not provoke controversy,” he affirmed.

“The worlds conjured by J.R.R Tolkien certainly do fire the imagination, which has meant that he has become one of the most widely read writers of the twentieth century, and immensely popularly in Poland,” he added.

Adamowicz was initially approached about the matter by Lukasz Golowanow, who works for popular regional web portal mmtrojmiasto.pl. The mayor encouraged the latter to start a Facebook page so as to gauge how much support there is for the concept.

With the Facebook page now active, over 2000 users have already declared their allegiance to the Tolkien cause, bringing a great deal of interest to the design, which was drawn up by Tadeusz Stefanowski from Transprojekt Gdansk Office.

Golowanow notes that the final decision rests with the Committee for Culture and Promotion of the Gdansk City Council, but he says that almost all of the members that he has contacted thus far are enthusiastic about the idea.

Whether or not the proposed viaduct will prove to be a portal to parallel world inhabited by hobbits and dwarves remains to be seen, a factor which could prove interesting for motorists who navigate the overpass.

I always smile a bit at comments about whether [insert name of arbitrary dead person] would have approved of something. I tend to think that we should worry less about what we imagine the dead might think about something and concentrate on what the living think. Once you die, you lose the right to approve/disapprove of anything from that point right until the end of the universe. I suspect that one of the best things about dying is you no longer have to give a toss.

Personally, I couldn't care less who the bridge is named after. No one is harmed, either way, so what does it matter?